Artificial gravity, nuclear engines and an interplanetary spacecraft. How the USSR planned an expedition to Mars and what happened

Now literally everyone knows a person like Elon Musk and his company SpaceX, and everyone knows that the company and the billionaire are planning to send an expedition to Mars in the very near future.

Did you know that back in the 1960s, the USSR also had ambitious plans to visit Mars and other cosmic bodies in our solar system? So in this material we will talk about the Soviet program for studying and visiting the Red Planet and what ultimately came of it.

How and on what they planned to study Mars in the USSR

So, on April 12, 1961, Soviet citizen Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. It was a historic event that showed that the Soviet space program was more effective at that time and allowed it to get ahead of the United States.

But at that time the space race was only gaining momentum and later it became known that the United States was planning to send its citizens to the moon.

The Soviet Union could not afford to be bypassed, and already in the 1960s, they began to actively discuss the creation of the so-called heavy interplanetary spacecraft (TMK). Its purpose would be to implement long-term space expeditions with the possibility of landing astronauts on other planets (initially to Mars, and later to Venus).

Moreover, it was assumed that the direct implementation of such flights should have begun by the mid-1970s.

But at that time, the USSR had only one heavy rocket, the R-7, which, in particular, launched the spacecraft from Yu. Gagarin into space. Therefore, guided by the decree of June 23, 1960, it was decided to involve S. P. Korolev, as well as engineers from other design bureaus to create a new super-heavy rocket H-1, designed to launch TMK into outer space.

What was planned to be created in the USSR

So, there were two options for TMK at once. So, according to Konstantin Feoktistov (pilot-cosmonaut, development engineer), the spacecraft should have been assembled directly in the orbit of our Earth. At the same time, the engineer assumed that for the successful acceleration of the spacecraft and the delivery of the crew to Mars, it is necessary use an electric propulsion system with a nuclear reactor installed on it (NEPPU).

In this case, the process of operation of this propulsion system was described as follows: in the course of a nuclear reaction, the fuel converted into high temperature gas, which is subsequently ejected from the nozzle and thus formed thrust.

Undoubtedly, NEPPU generates significantly less thrust compared to liquid-propellant rocket engines (liquid-propellant jet engines), but due to the possibility of operation for a long period can accelerate the complex for several months directly in Earth orbit when sending an expedition to Mars, as well as when returning it back to The earth.

In addition, taking into account the duration of the proposed mission to Mars (about two to three Earth years), the project Feoktistova also took into account the creation of life support, oxygen regeneration and growing food directly during mission.

And even a system was envisaged for creating artificial gravity by rotating the ship around the center of mass.

It was a very ambitious project considering that almost all the nodes had to be created from scratch. But there was also the so-called second version, which was proposed by G. Maximov (design engineer, Soviet scientist).

So the version proposed by Maximov was easier to implement, since initially there was no question of landing the crew on the surface of another planet. It was supposed to create a fairly compact spacecraft designed for three astronauts. And initially it was only about the flight of such a ship near Mars with the subsequent return of the crew to Earth.

At the same time, the ship had to be implemented: a residential complex, a worker with an airlock allowing spacewalk, biological, aggregate compartments, descent vehicle and correction system course.

What is noteworthy, within the framework of this project, a full-size ground-based experimental complex was also created, with with the help of which the scientists planned to completely simulate the flight of the crew to Mars with the study of possible abnormal situations.

So why such ambitious projects were never fully implemented?

The reason why these projects were completely canceled was due to several factors at once. First, all four experimental launches of the H-1 rocket were unsuccessful (the failure occurred at the first stage). Secondly, Korolyov was gone and there was no one to "push through" the idea of ​​a flight to Mars in the leading circles.

And in the end, the country's leadership decided to concentrate its efforts on the exploration of the Moon (since they considered it more promising direction), and even more so the United States in the lunar program was making serious progress and it was necessary to urgently catch up and distill.

And it turns out that in this way, ambitious projects for visiting Mars by Soviet astronauts were curtailed.

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